


Tailor Made

by Star_Nymph



Series: To The Moon and Back [23]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Asperger Inquisitor, Asperger Syndrome, F/M, Fluff, Wearing The Mantle, ask prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 18:39:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17688779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Nymph/pseuds/Star_Nymph
Summary: ♔ : Finding the other wearing their clothes from dickeybbqpit on tumblr. Thanks, darling!





	Tailor Made

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: This would be right after Eurydice and Cullen started their romantic relationship–after the kiss on the battlements.

Where is it? Where is  _it_?

Knees cracking, Cullen sat on his heels and peered under his desk, but there was nothing. Moth balls, a few cobwebs, a reminder of how desperately he needed to clean before he began sucking in only dust but not much else. He sniffed, crinkling his nose as he let his head thunk against a draw. He squinted down at the splintered wood floor, racking his brain for what must have been the fifteenth time in the last twenty minutes over this.

His mantle was gone. 

Not on his desk. Not _under_  his desk. Not on his bookcase, not somehow hanging out a window.

He was partially sure it had not been stolen by a crow–wait. Cullen sat up, giving that option some thought before smacking his forehead back down on the desk. The crows were too well mannered for that nonsense.

Sera? No, Sera knew better. She didn’t touch what she deemed ‘too his’. Armor, maybe. But not the mantle, not the hair. Not the box on the shelf.

No, this was on him.

Last night had been a blur. A bad day of spreading himself thin by way of early patrol and long sparring and a bad night of candle light and sloppy signatures until his visioned watered altogether. He didn’t recall when he undressed or where, only that he had fallen when tugged by a pair of slender hands and in a single breath he was cushioned by silvery hair.

“Andraste’s tits,” he grumbled under his breath and got to his knees with another crack. A hand scrubbing the back of head in agagition, Cullen turned his steely gaze to the doorway.

The training ring, perhaps? Stands to reason he would have put the heavy furs off to the side while having it out midday.

Crisp on the tongue morning air and the warmth of the sun greeted him down on the grounds, quiet on the regiment’s day off save for a few determined folk. He brushed past them swiftly, kicking up dirt in his haste to not be seen. He felt naked in the daylight without the fur at his jaw, the scarlet cloth to shield his steel back from sparking the sunlight. Incomplete. Unprofessional. A sign of incompetence or unrest.

The Commander not keeping to his own uniform. What would the men think?

Cullen found himself skidding from shadow to shadow much like a rat would when escaping the eye of a watchful cat, searching by barrels and tents, patches of grass, and discarded broken weaponry.

But there was nothing.

Because of course it wasn’t. Because that would be too easy for the likes of him and his nerves.

Annoyance marred his features, a hard glare creasing the deep wrinkles on his forehead. He rustled through an overgrowth of vines and ivy, thinking that someone might have tossed it over here, but no such luck. He racked his hands through his hair, quite ready to go on…well, an  _inquisition_  for the bloody thing when he heard the crunch of feet on gravel behind him.

“ _What_  are you doing?”

“Ah. Cassandra.” Cullen cleared his throat. He pulled himself from the bush and rushed to clap the dirt from his pants “I seem to have misplaced my mantle. It’s possible I left it here during yesterday’s spar but I haven’t been able to find it. Have you seen it?”

“Your mantle?” Cassandra repeated with a quirked brow. Her eyes shifted to the side and for a second she didn’t answer, as if she was mulling something over in her head. Then, as she touched her hand to her chin, she asked, ”Have you asked the Inquisitor?”

“Eur–” A cough. He caught himself in time. “I…no, I haven’t seen her today.”

Cassandra paused. There was something unreadable about her face and Cullen wasn’t sure if the Seeker, of all people, was having a go at him. He spotted something though, the beginnings of a smile under her hand. “Really. Perhaps you should check with her.”

Oh, oh, nevermind. She definitely was. Maker, if this was her idea of ‘fun’ or what have you, please just return the endless stream of ‘ughs’ he had grown accustomed to.

Cullen’s face grew warm as he avoided her eyes. “And she is…?”

“In her workshop, as she told me.” Cassandra flicked her hand in the direction of the fortress and Cullen, twisting his lips about to force the embarrassment down, tried not to look at the smug expression he knew was on her bloody face as he passed by.

The ‘workshop’ in question was situated in the danked depths of the castle. A freezing, stoned room in some dark corner Eurydice had told him she had unearthed while explore some collapsed debris and shattered wood frames. Cullen had been down there exactly twice and he wasn’t keen on visiting for a third time, unsettling as it were to even stand at its closed doorway. Eurydice had told him that was the point–he shouldn’t be comfortable there; it was a place for work, for magic, for her.

It was, for lack of a better term, a witch’s home and he was merely a guest with a limited time slot to enter.

 _‘But’_ –she said once, twisting her hair around a finger– _’you are always welcome. If you knock. Safe and welcome’._

 _Safe, is it?_ Cullen tapped his foot on the stoney floor, a chill crawling up his spine. Gently, he rapped his knuckles on the wooden door and started when it opened by its own accord. Just a little. A crack, a sliver of light cutting through, but it was enough to show him Eurydice made good on her promise.

“Eurydice?”

“Hm.”

The room was well lit, a bright candle hanging down from a single chandelier above. It was cluttered with shelves filled with heavy books and others holding brimming jars of liquid and other items (none of which he wanted to take too long to examine). There was a stone desk in the centered covered in broken bits of chalk, glittering stones, a mortar and pestle, scattered notes, and the brushed off  remnants of failed wards she had drawn into the surface. Eurydice stood just beyond that at the back of the room, a slab of stone cradled in one hand, a quill dripping in ink in the other, another older  stab displayed on a stand, the symbols so thoroughly eroded they were barely legible.  

She slouched in front of a large white canvas lined at the top with the King Tongue’s alphabet. Below was a scribbling of runes he did not know the origin of–some crossed out, others had an arrow pointing at certain letters above. Eurydice dug the tip of quill into a space next to a symbol–a single upward curve with three branches at the top–and then blotted it out entirely.

So engrossed her work, she didn’t appear to notice as he entered, or maybe she just didn’t care. With her, it could be either or both. Even as he walked deeper in, doing his best to not look behind him at shelf he was fairly positive had some jars with gawking eyes  floating in them, Eurydice didn’t acknowledge his presence.

She only narrowed her eyes at the slab in her arms, bit down on a chunk of her hair, and brushed the fur from her cheek.

 _Fur_ , because she was wearing his mantle and, Maker, was she wearing it well. With most he would have expected them to drown in the bulk of it but not her, not with her broad shoulders carrying it with a grace only seen in a red mountain lioness, her shining pelt the prize on her back. She wore it over a plain linen dress, the cloth kept wrapped by a loose belt which hung heavy with pockets at her hip. There was a pride in seeing her in that–not so much of a sexual or possessive nature, only that it fit so well Cullen couldn’t bare to think of it ever being off. It was as if his mantle, his personal symbol of authority, was more so tailor-made for her than it was for him.

Cullen didn’t know what to call the emotion welling up in his chest, only that a wild fire had been struck under his heart and it was spreading through his whole person.

 _So this was what Cassandra was on about_ , he thought disgruntled, rubbing his hand along his red cheeks.  _Of course_.  _The dwarf was rubbing off on her._

“You appear rested. You slept, yes? Yes.” Eurydice abruptly spoke, her attention still on her work.

“I—er, I did.” He looks at the back of her head, at the hastily braided plait stuffed into the fur. He resisted the urge to run his hands through and fix it proper. “Cassandra told me you might be able to assist me in finding my missing mantle. I can see now  _why_.”

Eurydice hummed. Her head tilted toward slightly as she tapped her quill against stone. “It was not missing. You gave it to me.” She said, matter-a-factually.

He blinked. “What?”

Eurydice turned a bit more and shifted the slab from her right to left. “Last night. You gave it to me to ‘take care of it’.” She plunked insistently at the course strands and then she shrugged, “So I did. Take care of it. And–it is very  _cold_  down here.”

It didn’t escape him that she spoke the last part a little softer, a tad more sheepishly than she might have meant. Sometimes he forgets that she has her small instances of shyness, the powerful witch that she is.

And vaguely, Cullen remembers something of the night before. Between the bottles of wine, the barked orders, the papers being slipped in and out of his hands, he recalls a slip of grey between his fingers. Bony, sharp hands guiding up a leader. A warm body above his head, whispering to  _sleep, tomorrow is another day, stay where you are now_.

She blows at the candle, orange goes to blue, moonlight hugs him as he drifts off with her in his hands, but when the sun comes, his bed is empty and there isn’t even a dent in the sheets from her body by his.

 _Why didn’t you stay?_ He wanted to ask but he kept his mouth shut, already knowing the answer. You can’t ask things like stars to stay still in the sky when they were made to drift.

Instead, Eurydice is turning toward him, her hands on her belt. “You wish it back now, yes?”

She begins to unbuckle but he places a hand over hers and fixes the belt back in place for her. “No. Keep it for now. It looks…comfortable on you.” Ah, yes, comfortable–not beautiful, not gorgeous, not radiant or magnificent, but comfortable because Cullen was a fool with a fool’s tongue and if he didn’t make a fool of himself, it wouldn’t be par for the course.

Eurydice took a step closer to him as he tightened the belt more than his should, his hands lingering far longer than what was polite. The back of his throat dried when she placed her hand on his arm.

“W-well, discretion matters little now, besides.” He all but blurted, a nervous smile playing on his lips, “I expect everyone will know about your clothing choice by noon.”

That seemed to give Eurydice some pause. She plucked the fur again, looking down at it before her eyes linger down off to the side. “Should they have not seen me? I did not think it was something to hide.”

And the way she said that, so open and unashamed, it called that hot feeling in his chest back to life. It forced Cullen to toss his inhibitions aside and look at her, truly look at her–her so perfect in his colors, untamed curls framing her face, her hands covered in ink and cold from the icy room.

He smiled and, heart on fire in his chest, said, “No…it is not. Forgive me, I’m thinking too much on it. Let them see you. I’m happy that there is something at all to see.”

He hardly need to move an inch before Eurydice was closing the gap, her lips warm on his.


End file.
